the goan I network
PANAJI
Environmentalist Claude Alvares has told the court that the State government is targeting him for his various exposures and green struggles.
Pleading anticipatory bail in the case against him, his associate Siddharth Basu, and other activists for the symbolic locking of the Mines Department in May, his lawyer Caroline Colaco told Judge Irshad Aga that her clients would fully co-operate with the investigation. Opposing the bail plea, public prosecutor Poonam Bharne told the court that Alvares was not co-operating with the police. Bharne said, the police need to recover some articles that Alvares and the other agitators used on the day besides confirming the identities of the others involved.
Police had booked Alvares, Basu and ‘others’ after an official of the mines department filed a complaint saying the action obstructed the work of the department.
Alvares and a dozens others had during a protest against the government’s failure to recover the illegal mining scam proceeds symbolically locked the department adjacent to Azad maidan and handed over the keys to the police present there.
The two were summoned by police to join the investigation but both skipped the summons and filed for anticipatory bail. Both have been granted interim relief preventing the police from arresting them until the bail application is heard.
